Slaughtergarde's History

The story of Slaughtergarde begins almost a thousand years ago, when a sorcerous demon prince named Mu-Ialm Laa set his sights on the millions of souls on the Marerial Plane .As he gathered demon hordes and depraved mortals to his layer of the Abyss, a place known as the Mountains of Sorrow Beyond Measure, he began plotting.
 

Mu-Tahn Laa quickly reached an impasse. The energy required to sustain a gate to the Material Plane large enough to march an army through was incalculable. Even if he could accumulate enough power to create such a gate, the forces of good could quickly thwart his invasion by attacking the gate on the Material Plane, where defending it would be difficult. Mu-Tahn Laa's frustration was so great that even the screams of the innocent provided no succor. He brooded on his black throne, contemplating other means to reach the Material Plane.
 

In a flash of inspiration, Mu-Tahn Laa conceived a fiendish plan. He cast off his despondency and started a series of eldritch trials, using his rival's minions (and sometimes his rivals themselves) as experiments.
 

After decades of research, Mu-Tahn Laa's efforts bore fruit. If his cults could provide enough energy in the form of souls who were honored and then sacrificed, Mu-Tahn Laa could actually transpose part of the Abyss and the Material Plane. Several square miles of the Mountains of Sorrow Beyond Measure could become part of the Material Plane. The corresponding territory on the Material Plane would be part of the Abyss forever.

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The transposition would be a one-way trip, so Mu-Tahn Laa began to hollow out a mountain, packing it with his armies and enough supplies for an extended campaign on the Material Plane. Mindful of the risk of failure, the demon prince thought it prudent to build some smaller gates connecting the mountain-fortress to the Abyss. He couldn't retreat an army back through those gates, but he and his personal retinue should be able to travel between the two planes unimpeded.

After years of toil, Mu-Tahn Laa's mountain fortress, which he named Slaughrergarde, was ready. Mortal cults, responding to whispered promises of dark power, began gathering in a remote mountain valley. Demons were coming to the Material Plane, and they were coming to stay.

But the forces of good were not as oblivious as Mu-Tahn Laa had imagined. The blind dwarf sage Thermeskor had a vision of a mountain weeping blood. Elf mystics found their meditations interrupted by similar scenes. Humans native to one particular mountain valley began erecting black obelisks at the direction of their priests, often with the aid of dwarves and elves.

Oracular visions warned angels that extraplanar war was coming to the Material Plane. A celestial army encamped on the Plain of Ida in the Heroic Domains of Ysgard recei ved a loathsome but ultimately useful visitor - a jealous lieutenant of Mu-Tahn Laa named Kuthrikki. Kuthrikki revealed Mu-Tahn Laa's plans to the celestials. They, in turn, hastily moved their host to the Material Plane and worked with the mortals there.

When Mu-Tahn Laa transposed Slaughtergarde to the Material Plane, he found an army of elves, dwarves, humans, and angels waiting eagerly to cast his invading force back to the Abyss. At first, the prospect of battle delighted the demon prince, and he ordered his armies forward into battle. It is said that the very sky shook that day, and the Marrilach River ran dark with mortal blood, celestial essence, and demonic ichor.

As the sun set on the first day of the Battle of Slaughtergarde, Mu-Tahn Laa noticed a faint pull on the eldritch weavings responsible for Slaughtergarde's transposition. The black obelisks were siphoning away the power of the demon prince's magic, threatening to throw his entire fortress back to the Abyss. Mu-Tahn Laa ordered his soldiers to destroy the obelisks quickly, lest his invasion end in disaster.

But Mu-Tahn Laa's host was mad with bloodlust, and the chaotic warriors scorned his orders. As the obelisks siphoned more of its power away, Slaughtergarde began to break apart. At first, it crumbled around the edges, but as the forces of good redoubled their efforts, the entire mountain began t0 quake as if about to erupt. Before sunrise, in an upheaval loud enough to be heard across a continent, Slaughtergarde exploded. The majority of its wreckage hurtled across the void between the planes to its proper place in the Abyss.

Satisfied that the Material Plane was safe, most mortals returned to their homes. The celestial host, aided by a few brave natives of the Material Plane, turned its efforts toward tracking down stragglers from Mu-Tahn Laa's horde. Now, eight centuries after the Battle of Slaughtergarde, the only reminders that it ever happened are a sinister crater where the transposed mountain briefly stood and a network of crumbling black obelisks.

As for Mu-Tahn Laa, he never returned to the Mountains of Sorrow Beyond Measure. His fellow demon princes gave him up for dead. They then fought over his vacant holdings in the Abyss.

The obelisks did thei r job, but the destruction of Slaughtergarde wasn't total, nor was its retum to the Abyss complete. A few chunks of Slaughtergarde retained enough of Mu-Tahn Laa's transposition magic to embed themselves in the Material Plane permanently. There they remain.